The Crass Menagerie
by Katherine-E-Kora
Summary: In coast-side New Jersey, citizens of Pierpoint have been seeing and participating in some strange things for quite a while-not black magic or occult activities, but wild and fantastic parties led by hosts of mysterious winged patrons. When people begin to die left and right from random animal attacks, it attracts the attention of the Winchesters, who decide to investigate...
1. The Large White Room

PROLOGUE: The Large White Room

The summer breezes could not have been more perfect if they were reined in by a stage queue. It was as if they had been captured in a jar and let out in controlled bursts by some mysterious machine. Yet, they were natural. They smelled nice; of lilacs and growing, wild things. They carried in the warm scents of the green outdoors through the wide-open white-framed parlor windows. And, for that, the angels were very grateful.

Angels, but only in the loosest sense of the word. While the real heavenly host was surely scowling upon them, these unintended side-effects of the natural order reclined in plush white couches and imbibed copious amounts of expensive food and alcohol. Their unhealthy and slothful habits had been tended to for some time now, and they had grown quite accustomed to these sorts of lazy summer afternoons. The butlers hurried in and out at their command. The satin curtains were loosed and he wind flung them about in drifty hazes.

The whole parlor was white; white wood floors, white wood walls, white fabric on the couches, white drapes and curtains over the open windows, white faux rug spread through the middle of the floor. Through this misty screen of color, everything else about these angels was made unapparent and redundant—for they, in fact, were the room. They were no less a part of the room than the couches. The feathers from their wings sometimes caught in the wind. A hanging one would be gently ripped off and tossed out the window by the breeze. Catch in the rosebush outside. Black and grey and red and brown and all sorts of colors. Spread out in wide, proud arcs.

They weren't usually allowed to show their wings off. Not in public, anyway. But it felt good to stretch them out in the parlor, especially on good days like this one.

"Somebody, pick a record," One of the women ordered sweetly, with just the slightest hint of venom in her delicate tone. She paused and pushed the red hair out of her thin face before gesturing to the opalescent vintage record-player in the corner of the room, sitting atop a carved wooden table. "I'm bored."

"You go off and pick the record, sweetheart," A male voice chimed in, scathing and mutely accented. Its owner had collected himself against the far wall, between two windows. Middle-aged, but still retaining his youth. The hint of a smirk had been carved into his skin. "If you're so bored with yourself, you pick the music. I couldn't be bothered to do it even if I wanted it, too."

"Balthazar," A stern man put in, "Mind your manners."

"Oh, my apologies, Michael, I forgot you were in the room. One should always be respectful in the presence of ladies, right, Gabriel?"

The one named Gabriel, reclining on the long white couch with his brown wings spread underneath him in oblique shapes, made an approving gesture with his right hand, smiled, but said nothing. He neglected to even open his eyes.

Balthazar crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. Despite his complaints, he too was bored.

"I want to stretch my wings," He complained aloud.

"Not allowed," Michael interjected, "Somebody will see us."

Balthazar mocked him idly, "_Not allowed, somebody will see us._ You and your damned rules."

"It's for your own good, Balthazar. Stop causing trouble."

The red-haired woman had, at this point, risen to the balls of her feet and crossed over to the record player on her own. She flipped through the dusty jackets and albums before finding something that vaguely amused her, removing it from its cardboard case, and placing it on the turn-table. Horns and faint orchestra noises rose from the gramophone caustically.

"Anna, turn that garbage off," Balthazar started, "Put on something we can dance to."

"No," She rebuked, "I gave you a chance to put on something you liked. Now, you have to listen to what I chose."

At this, Michael nodded in approval. Balthazar rolled his eyes, but argued no further. She had a point this time. Anna returned to her chair and sat once again, with her wings draped over the arms.

When someone finally spoke again, interrupting the peaceful and dull silence, it was Gabriel. He opened one eye and glanced at Michael, who returned the gesture with a frown from his place on the coffee table.

"Hey, bro," Gabriel sneered.

"What is it, Gabriel?" Michael muttered, not enthused.

Gabriel pushed himself upright, using his elbow, and slicked back his hair again before continuing. "That's funny," He sarcastically said, "I remember everyone else saying they were going to be here. I wonder where they all went off to."

"Raphael and Lucifer went off to the gun range for practice." Michael responded.

"Oh," Gabriel drew out his reply, "I bet that's going _just fantastically_."

"They'll get along." Michael paused before adding, "In public."

Balthazar joined in again, offering his input on the matter. "And, with some aggressive persuasion from father." He waved one of his hands grandly, "Uriel is probably mucking about with the boss-man. Maybe sucking up to daddy. There's a few of us downstairs. Dad knows, Castiel is probably drinking his brains out."

"It's dangerous for him to be out by himself," Michael sighed.

"I'm not volunteering," Balthazar chuckled, "Sounds fun and all, but I'd rather get a good hour's stretch in before dark."

There was another pause. Anna's foot swayed slightly underneath the hem of her dress to the tune of the music, and she let a wearied sigh fly from her parted lips. The trumpets fumed carefully from the horn of the gramaphone. It was very peaceful in the white room.

A flutter of curtains and wings. Black feathers tossed around the room in currents and eddies. A medium-height man in a trench coat fumbled through the window and collapsed in the center of the floor, breathing raggedly.

"Oh, look," Balthazar groaned, "Here's the prodigal son, now."

"Save it, Balthazar." Castiel mumbled from the shag carpet, "Leave me be."

Gabriel heaved himself from the couch in an instant, brushing off his clothes and snatching a half-eaten bar of chocolate from the sidetable before stooping to grab and shake at Castiel's shoulder. He gave Balthazar a trivial look.

"This guy needs 20 CC's of fun, stat," Gabriel joked, "We're losing him!"

"Stop it, you lot." Anna snapped.

"She's right. This is bothersome." Michael insisted.

Balthazar ignored them. "When's the next party? Do you think he can hold his own until then?"

"I think he can," Gabriel smirked.

Castiel remained half-consious on the floor. He mumbled to himself about the richness of human nature and was utterly unnaffected by its delicacies.

In his head, the music played louder, and there were the sounds of a great and fantastic party. Colors and women and men locked together in courtship and booming speakers and great times and far-away places. All of these things flung together by one word. "Party".

Boss sure did know how to throw a good party.


	2. Don't Think That I Am Wooing

CHAPTER ONE: Don't Think That I Am Wooing

_"Don't think that I'm wooing! Angel, even if I were, you'd never come. For my call is always full of 'Away!' Against such a powerful current you cannot advance. Like an outstretched arm is my call. And its clutching, upwardly open hand is always before you as open for warding and warning, aloft there, inapprehensible." Rainer Maria Rilke_

It was supposedly by complete chance that Dean Winchester ended up at the largest party in the entire eastern portion of the continent on his little 'vacation': starring none other than his younger brother and said brother's bombshell of a girlfriend. He would've rather been anywhere else in the world—despite the grinning façade he put off—and he well could have been, too.

The storming neon lights and endless deluge of gourmet foods on tiny silver trays held aloft by pompous looking people had not brought him to this place. Though, they were certainly a noteworthy plus. No; he had been informed that there was something big going down. A case. And he was determined, stubbornly, to crack it.

Sam gripped Dean's shoulder firmly, snapping him out of whatever thoughts were racing through his mind. He had his other arm around Jess's waist, and she'd draped one of hers over the lower portion of his shoulders. That's as high as she could reach without straining herself. Sam spoke without directly looking at Dean.

"Dean," He lowly muttered, "I'm going to show Jess around. Do some sight-seeing, you know?"

"Well," Dean gruffly replied, "There are plenty of sights to see." Briskly, he pulled a silver flask from his inner suit pocket and took a long pull. They both screwed up their faces in disgust; I, because my whiskey was pungent and bitter. Sam, because of Dean's awful habits, and because he'd caught sight of the swaying, feathered girls under a stage light that he'd taken to watching. Sighing, he silently led Jess away.

Dean waited until the pulsating crowd swallowed them alive. Fumbling, he replaced his flask and pulled out a small, folded piece of worn-out leather, running his free-hand over his chin and the sparse stubble he'd allowed to grow there.

Time to get down to business.

The layout of the carved-maple mansion had been engraved into his mind as such: a white-on-blue sketch of each layer of the place lying on the small, rectangular table of his cheap motel. There were four floors in all, including the basement, which held the wine-cellar. The party was held on the first floor, or at least what everyone was allowed to see of it, and all of the other floors were unimportant, blurring into fuzzy shapeless creatures the farther Dean panned away from the circular main room.

The whole magnificent place arced upwards, peeling through the upper floors to reveal lightly guarded balconies. The ceiling had been snipped to uncover a swath of midnight sky streaming from a dutifully clean window. Dean stood in the outer ring of a drunken circular dance-floor, headed by a man behind turntables, blaring awful techno-dance music through hungry-looking speakers. Beyond the outer ring, it was all sleek metal furnishings and intimate spaces and mood-setting light-play. Futuristic mixers. Trickling pathways of water that flowed down 90-degree angles into calm pools teeming with tropical fish. A few winged patrons milled about, only speaking to each other.

They had entered flagrantly only moments after Dean and Sam Winchester had arrived. Menacing in a quiet sort of way. Watchful. Yet clearly enjoying themselves among their guests.

Dean pushed his way to the nearest authoritative looking character in the crowd and began to question him.

* * *

Near a set of heavy, gold-clad and clean maple doors, a small high-up table presided over the conversation of two sturdily winged men. It had been messily spattered with empty shot-glasses and feathers—a few black and a few grey. The music was loud. They were forced to speak louder.

"Castiel," The older of the two greeted his friend with a slight and fanciful accent—one that had known many fine things. He gave off an air of knowing sarcasm as well. His bedraggled yet orderly appearance, his choice of tight pants and a v-neck even at his age—which did not look bad at him—proclaimed it.

"Balthazar," The other one shot back, his voice deep and jagged. The black feathers belonged to him—Castiel. Glassy and frighteningly blue eyes glazed the crowd without rest. He was dangerously drunk. He reeked of it.

The one named Balthazar leaned over Castiel and pointed him in the direction of someone appealingly strange.

"Look at him. Sticks out like a sore thumb, wouldn't you say?" He drawled deviously, "Who was it again? Winded-peckers?"

"It's Win—s" Castiel paused, trying to hold back his breakfast, before continuing again, "—chesters. Don't be so ignorant, Balthazar."

Balthazar let out an exasperated sigh, stepping in front of Cas and gripping the edges of the beige coat he wore very gravely.

"You want to know what your problem is, Cassie?"

"I drank too much."

"No," Balthazar exclaimed. He took a step back and slapped Castiel's shoulder roughly, pointedly saying, "You aren't drunk enough! Remember that party in Rose Bay, when you savaged that bartender?"

Castiel narrowed his eyes. "No."

"Good," Balthazar commended, "Because that's how it should be. It's a _party_, Cassie. _You know_ he throws all of these for _us_. You're supposed to forget what happens. My God, if you remembered all of them they would stop being so fun all the damn time."

"You're just trying to blackmail me again."

"I'm hurt that you think so," Balthazar clutched his heart earnestly, "Even if it is true. Now, now, Cassie. We drink all we want for free. Might as well enjoy it."

* * *

"Excuse me," Dean opened the small leather wallet to a fleeing, aggravated man with a bushy moustache. The crowd pulled the distances between them apart like an ocean. "Excuse me, sir? Could I ask you a few questions about the owner of this house?"

"Who asks?"

"FBI!"

There was no reply.

* * *

"Look at him go," Balthazar joked, "Squirming around for information. What a joke. The boss must not know about him yet, I suppose. What do you think, Cassie? Castiel?"

Castiel slouched over the silver table top of the bar where he'd been dragged to drink.

"I think I want to meet him."

"I'm beginning to think you fancy him."

"I do not _fancy_ him," Castiel roughly insisted, laughing to himself and the voices that ran through his head, "I just find him _fancy._"

* * *

And perhaps, too, it was by chance that, after calling Sam multiple times through various cellphones, Dean Winchester had finally slowed himself by the bar, tired of chasing after tribbles and hints of whispers that were utterly untraceable.

There were simply no leads. There had never been any in the guests, because none of these people had ever actually been invited to a party at the many grand houses that scattered the countryside and the city. They simply received word by rumor that there was a party being held at one particular place, and then they flocked together, following the crowd, and the crowd had no origin except

for the angels.

In the loosest sense of the word, Dean could now see. Because, not two feet away from him along the bar, two of them were engaging in a furious conversation, coaxing liter upon liter of liquor into their systems. One looked to be sleeping. Or dead. Their wings were surprisingly realistic. If Dean hadn't known better, he might have called them real mutants. But there were no such mutants like that.

"Excuse me," Dean sighed in frustration across the bar, catching the attention of the less drunk seraph. He didn't even bother flashing his badge this time. It had proved useless in the past. "Can one of you tell me what this is?"

The middle-aged, rascally-looking man rolled his eyes, moving frantically, "Well, that depends on what you are, and what you mean by 'this', and such and such and on and on. There's really not a correct answer, is there? How stifling. I think I'd _fancy_ a piss right about now, actually. So, if you don't mind, you can just speak to my dear friend Cassie over there." The man pointed him in the direction of another, draped across the top of the bar, drowning in alcohol. His beige trench-coat had been pulled under his armpits to clear way for a pair of wide black wings, which protruded from a white polo and drooped casually as if in deep slumber.

Dean meant to give the man a skeptical reply, even just a skeptical look, but when he turned around to face him, the man was gone with the crowd. Sighing, Dean swiveled his chair closer to the dead man and chanced tapping his shoulder. Castiel peeled his face from the counter and glanced up. Through the alcohol and weariness, Dean Winchester looked like a god.

"Oh my," He mumbled half to himself, "I was looking at you earlier. I saw you and you…you're _not_ from the _FBI_. I know you're not, because you're _too attractive_. Don't try to _fool_ me." The last few syllables were accompanied by a soft poke on Dean's cheek. He backed away unnoticeably.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," He coughed, motioning to the bartender for his own round of drinks, "Your friend told me that you could answer some questions for me."

"I can. Probably won't though," Castiel wobbled a bit in his seat, "I'm Castiel, an angel," He grinned and laughed through his teeth, motioning vaguely with his hands, his fingers forming a tiny hoop a few inches above his messed-up dark hair, "_Of the Lord_." Castiel broke into quiet laughter. The joke amused him.

"Well," Dean smiled back, humoring him, "That's nice."

"Sure is."

"Tell you what, Cas," He suggested, pulling a small business card out of his coat pocket. Dean turned it over and scribbled his number and name on the back in fragrant black sharpie before placing it snugly in the exposed pocket of the trench-coat hanging over Castiel, still grinning. "You're obviously having a very good time. I don't want to ruin that for you, so just give me a call after this whole," He gestured to the empty shots glasses on the bar with his hands, "Thing wears off, okay?"

Dean stumbled off into the crowd, nearly knocking Sam and Jess over as they returned to look for him. They exchanged bewildered, exhausted looks.

"Find anything…useful?" Sam sighed. Jess shot off a round of curious giggling. Something strange had obviously happened to them, too. Dean shook his head briskly.

"No. Just a house full of clueless drunken bastards. Let's get the hell out of here before the stupid rubs off."

"Agreed."

"Aw," Jess jibed, "I was just starting to have fun. You should have seen Sam, getting all jealous back there, it was so adorable. He was just _burning_ with envy."

"Was little Sammy _jealous_?" Dean mocked, feigning a pout. Sam rolled his eyes. "I bet it was one of those damn angels, wasn't it?"

"How'd you guess?" Jess sarcastically replied. Then, tugging the two boys' elbows insistently, she began a brisk walk toward the front door, where ever more people flooded in. Complete strangers, none of them useful, or formally invited. "Let's go. We promised Bobby we'd call before dark in the morning."

Balthazar returned to the bar with Gabriel in tow—the two had found each other someplace in the crowd—and immediately shook Castiel conscious again. A look of dumb bliss had been spread across his features with spilled drink.

"So, what happened," Gabriel insisted, "I've been told that you were talking to someone—d" The word he'd intended and meant was 'hot' or 'attractive', but what came out of his mouth were a series of loud sounds that meant essentially the same thing.

Castiel grinned stupidly and pulled the card out of his coat pocket.

"I've taken possession of his cell phone number."

In the nature of all good parties, the dancing floor was overtaken by a giddy group of girls—winged, like Castiel, though at this point he couldn't tell their identities, just knew somehow that they were women—that took the beat of the bass a bit faster. The man behind the music complied easily, a new song came on, and in a second the whole mood changed. Outside, Dean Winchester glanced at the spectacle from the rearview mirror of his '67 Impala. The windows and the opened doors seemed to spill a little more yellow over the brick circular driveway. The ground seemed to shake with a little more intensity. With their leaving, a whole new party had become. Something that had once been protected like a secret society that the Winchesters were never allowed to know about.

Gabriel and Balthazar yanked Castiel about the large bustle with an air of ecstasy. Nobody quite knew what they were doing. One moment, Castiel was overseeing a table clad with full shot-glasses and the next a table clad with empty ones, and then he was whirling around with someone in his arms, or maybe he was in theirs. There was no way of knowing for sure. Pulsating lights of varying colors made the whole affair fuzzy.

There was a stout man in a black suit and he was asking Castiel if he'd had a good time.

Anna and Rachel were chittering about something they found particularly funny.

Balthazar and Gabriel, lit by the shadows of a few remaining, staggering patrons, singing bar songs and raising their glasses to the sky, as if holy fire might fill them up.

An engulfing light-headedness.

The night finally ended with one last drink. Castiel blacked out.


End file.
